 Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby cheating video and today is a very special one. Welcome to the Ultimate Guide to Beginning Your Hobby Journey. This is going to be a tutorial that takes you through exactly what you need and don't need if you're just starting out on your miniature painting journey. I've been painting miniatures for 22 years. I've been competition painting for the last eight. I've recorded probably in the range of 300 tutorials now and in that time I've learned a few things that work and don't work and one of the things that I've wanted to do more than anything is really be able to just share with you my own experiences. So this video is going to focus step by step on if you're just starting out the kinds of things you should pay attention to and most importantly the kinds of things you shouldn't. One of the things that I note about starting this hobby is it's so overwhelming. There are so many people telling you do this, no don't do this, you need all of these things. No you don't, you only need one of those things. There's so much conflicting information and I'm going to do my best in this video and the follow up to this to just cut through that noise and give you pure signal. What are those things that I wish I knew when I was starting out to pare away all of that other stuff and just focus on the things that are going to get you going with minimal investment and maximum success. The important part to remember is that you don't need to learn it all right away. There is so much more beyond what we're going to cover in this video and you don't need to learn it now. When you're starting out and you're in grade school they teach you basic math first. They don't sit you down and go here is addition, also now here is advanced calculus. Advanced calculus exists, it can do stuff, it's very useful but first we're going to cover the basics, addition, subtraction and your multiplication tables. That's what this video is. Everything is timestamped down below so if you have particular questions you can always go there. I will link out in the video to other videos I have where you can explore these concepts in greater detail so feel free to follow up with those and as always as we go through this if you've got questions drop them down below. Don't forget if you like this to hit like and if you want to keep going on your hobby journey if there's more you want to learn subscribe. Thank you very much let's start the video. Alright so we're going to get right into it here we go we've got a sprue you've got your new sprue what do you do what do you need where do we begin well it's pretty straightforward the first thing you're going to need is some clippers you can get these anywhere don't buy expensive gaming clippers and that's the first rule I'm going to tell you don't generally buy expensive stuff at your hobby store that you can buy at a hardware store or a craft store you always get it cheaper from those and they function exactly identical just without the over expensive gaming rebrand the important part about your clippers is they have a flat bottom so you can press right up against the piece and get a nice clean cut now sometimes when you cut off you're still going to have little flash left like you see on the bottom there or on that tip of his arm joint and those can make it hard to attach pieces later there can also be seam lines as you see running down the side of this guy we don't want those those are getting away so we need an exacto knife yet again I'm using a cheap exacto knife I buy my exacto blades in bulk from eBay I use medical supply not buying 10 blades for like $20 at a hobby store I get a thousand blades for $10 for medical supply companies to remove the extra flash you want to scrape very carefully now I scraped towards my thumb but you'll notice how careful and slow I do it do not push hard you will cut right through your skin safety first always be careful don't try to scrape the whole line all at once you'll only cut away the fig you apply gentle pressure and then you just slowly scrape a few times once you have it all removed once in a while you can get some sandpaper don't buy hobby sandpaper go to the auto parts store buy some 400 or 800 grit sandpaper like in sheets like this and then you can just lightly sand and you're good to go and that model is going to be all clean and ready for assembly alright so our fig is all cleaned up we've got mold lines scraped so now we got to glue it together how do we make these little pieces of plastic you know actually become a figure so that's where we go to glue yet again there's lots and lots of different glues on the market and a million people are going to tell you what they like but I'm going to try to break down for you common glues why I like them and what you should use okay so let's start with the basics plastic glue this is the plastic glue I like revel there's plenty of brands of it it really doesn't matter you can also do something like Tamiya extra thin cement again it's plastic glue the important part about plastic glue is it forms a chemical bond between plastic it only works with plastic you can't use it with resin minis you can't use it with metal minis for those you need something like CA glue this is standard super glue medium CA is what you should generally do it's what I use for all my for all sorts of jobs are just glue and stuff together if you've got something heavy big piece of resin metal lock tight super glue ultra gel control this stuff will lock two pieces of resin or metal together and they will not break apart very easily at all it is my go-to product but as this fig we're looking at is plastic I'm going to go ahead and use plastic glue so take a little bit of the top off and then I'm just going to coat that area that's going to attach in it we're using the little applicator you can be a little generous it's fine it's going to melt the plastic but the Tamiya extra thin it doesn't melt it very strongly we take it we press it up against the where it needs to join hold it tight one two three seconds tada it's attached now if you've got something a little heavy or something like that then you can take it and just run it right along the edges I like plastic glue better for plastic stuff because it's easier to set it's easier to work with and it makes sure the bond is really strong and will last but of course you can just get some medium CA glue and use it for everything when you're starting out no problem all right let's talk about sub-assemblies this is another thing you're going to hear all the time when you start out that you should paint your model in sub-assemblies now I'm not going to say I never do sub-assemblies but I'll say I do them as rarely as possible and when you're starting out you should basically never do them if you can't see an area of a model you don't need to paint an area of a model you're not painting for golden demon when you start out you're trying to get an army on the table you're trying to learn the basics don't over complicate your life don't make things harder than they need to be and as it will be the lesson throughout the rest of this don't make perfect the enemy of the good when you're just starting the figs you paint aren't going to be perfect the figs you paint a couple months later will be far better so get them disassembled your life will be easier the only time I do sub-assemblies with a fig like you see on the table here or on the screen here where I have a writer and a mount I'll generally keep those separate because it's just easy enough that I can just set the writer right on top so that's no problem but if it's something like arms or a head or a weapon just put it on there put it the assemble the fig all the way and call it a day all right so we've got our fig all assembled and this might seem like a weird time to talk about basing but when you're starting out this is when you want to think about basing this is another one of those things oftentimes when I'm painting for display pieces I will paint the miniature and the base separate okay but when you're just starting out just get them on the base get them based I have tons of fun tutorials about basing those are for later for now let's get it painted you don't need to worry about doing this thing I have here where I'm running a post into the foot or something like that so I can paint it completely separately and cleanly we're not concerned about that at this point again this is all stuff you can play with later on once you've got your footing under you for now keep it simple that's the lesson so let's grab a base and let's get this guy attached so yet again I'm just gonna take him set him up where you know roughly I wanted to be so center the base but you can kind of move him around whatever you feel is good depending on the model we're gonna get some plastic glue on his feet we're gonna melt those feet right to that base pretty straightforward the key with basing early on like this is then when you prime it and when you paint it you're doing everything all at once it keeps everything expedient and you don't have to worry about having lots of stuff scattered around your desk yet again I give it three seconds just to soften the plastic a little stick it down there and more or less it's good to go in this particular case I think I actually have it attached to my finger for a second which is not great but that's okay there you go he's pinned on there so my best advice is just get him on get him attached to a base then you want to go ahead and at this stage make up your base and yet again our lesson here especially when you're starting out is keep it simple there's so many fun bases you can do but we're just gonna go for some simple like mud and texture and stuff like that maybe you use a citadel sterling battle mire like I've got here maybe you use some Vallejo basing paste this is really nice pre-made stuff you can buy big tubs of it for like 10 or 12 dollars on Amazon it's great you hundreds and hundreds of bases out of that if you want to go with the ultimate cheap option maybe just some rocks and sand go out in your backyard get some dirt mix it with some pva glue a white glue and put it on the base whatever you're using the point is do it before you prime it when you're starting out this is the way to go there's all sorts of things we can do later as we continue to grow in the hobby but when we're just starting out it's great to just get that paste get it on there you notice I just apply a big dollop squidge it around and then I make sure to add once I'm all done I go back with a brush and clean it up off his feet or anything like that where I didn't get it wipe off the sides like I just did there with my finger and we're all set before we leave this section behind I wanted while my base is drying you can see all that basing paste is on there now I wanted to take a moment to talk about some other useful tools that you should just have in your hobby arsenal when you're beginning and the nice part is most of these cost basically zero dollars but they're all pretty useful this is just a couple things that are going to end up being very valuable to you as you're working one white glue Elmer's glue like the stuff you you you give your kindergartner right this is great for making basing paste as I just mentioned for gluing down bits of scenery for making terrain like all sorts of stuff like that next up paper clips just go get yourself a big old box of paper clips if you already have some you're great paper clips are super useful you can make pins out of them if you eventually need to you can use them to clean the top of a stuck paint dropper bottle which is very useful so they're always just a lot of purposes and finally a little set of tweezers again don't go by really nice hobby tweezers just get some quality ones from like a makeup store a dollar store something like that they can be really useful if you need to grab a very tiny part and like assemble it or place it onto the miniature very carefully stuff like that it's just nice to have a little set around those three things are tiny little tools I use all the time that I think you should have in your arsenal alright he's all dry and it's almost time to start painting but before we get into painting I wanted to talk about how you actually hold the mini this seems so silly you think like well you hold in your hand what would be hard about that Vince I hold it just like you see on screen here and I paint it I'm gonna tell you right now this is something I would actually recommend you stop doing and in fact never begin doing when you're starting it kills your hand your you will stress out your hand you'll get muscle cramps it's bad you shake the miniature more your hand to get shake here it's harder to do good work hence buy yourself a little hobby handle now you could start with something like Citadel's they make these for like $8 or whatever on my opinion they're fine but it'll too expensive this is from game envy they make a cheaper version quite nice you put blue tack on the top there you just get your standard blue tack again bought from like a dollar store don't go out and buy some kind of hobby blue tack or whatever just get bulk blue tack and you can just attach in my on top or you can be super cheap like I am and you can just use the tops of old spray cans and quarks and things like that and just stick it right to the top very easy what you're aiming for is a shape that is the your the shape of your hand at rest so if you can hold the thing in a no stress position where it's just that comfortable like I have here you're in the right place all right so now that the figs assembled before we can actually put paint on this bad boy we got to get imprimed so let's talk about primer it's very important to have a primer layer down even on plastic figs it makes your paint at here the simplest method of primer is of course a rattle can nothing wrong with it especially when you're starting out you can buy the expensive hobby versions or you can basically go buy the stuff from the hardware store like Rust-Oleum or Krylon or whatever in the end you're not going to get very much of a difference between the two the things like the games workshop spray paint and the army painter spray paint and stuff like that are still just basically spray paints if you want to spend more money on a spray paint go to the store go to your craft store and buy a really nice spray paint there they're half the price of these gaming paints and they perform a lot better if you're going to use rattle can primer try to get something in the color that the majority of your fig is going to be so example here I have deep reds start with something that's like a darker color so if I were gonna do blood angels maybe I would use that deep red then it becomes a lot easier to paint on top of it don't prime in flat black alternatively here I have primers for your airbrush we're gonna talk about airbrushing more in just a moment because I am gonna get into that the two primers I like are the lejo surface primer and steinal res I trust both of them they're very good you can use them to create a zenithal which we'll also talk about in just a moment but yet again the same rules apply if you're using an airbrush you can also just use it to prime in the main color of your figure so get somebody's mostly skin maybe use a skin primer like on the right get somebody who was like those blood angels maybe it's dark red like on the left all right I hear you why am I talking about an airbrush in a beginner video well this is the airbrush I started out with very early when I started painting a lot the master airbrush it's cheap you can get a whole airbrush set up for around a hundred dollars off Amazon everything you ever need I have lots of videos on it and you will never make a better investment in your hobby no more can you do you have to have trouble priming in the winter applying base coats to monsters easy and take seconds as opposed to hours painting massive loads of terrain fast and simple it's a tool start with a cheap one and you can eventually upgrade to something like I have here my Iwata HPCS now specifically we're gonna get right into priming I'm gonna prime this bad boy up I'm starting with some Vallejo German gray it's a dark gray black it's what I use as my base I know I said don't prime in black but stay with me trust me there's a method to my madness here it's very simple like this takes a few seconds to prime it and the nice part is it applies a nice clean thin coat of primer rattle cans will sometimes overspray they will chalk they will dust you have to worry about temperatures and humidity I worry about none of that stuff I prime any day every day anytime I want to and the best part is I get a nice clean preservation of the fig all detail is still there easy peasy first layer down now the basic thing that I'm telling you to do here is to Zenithal this is something I would recommend everybody do when they start it's a little tricky but not that tricky start with a dark color like that black now I'm just coming in with a white primer and I'm shooting it from above at an angle see how wonderfully that picks out all the detail in the fig look at all that lovely contrast and we'll talk about contrast more next week but look at how much more readable the fig is all the volumes all the little areas that I want to put highlights on they're already picked out if I want to go use contrast paints or something now I can just slap them on and basically be done doing this step takes seconds and it's so simple you need about three square feet of space to get an airbrush set up to have a little booth and have your little airbrush and like I said you can start the whole thing off for around a hundred bucks it is the best investment I ever made in the hobby I made it close to when I started but I didn't make it day one and I regret it it makes your life so much simpler so there you go well it's finally time to talk about paint whether it's Citadel or Vallejo or model color or game color or any other brand you like paint is obviously a pretty essential part of the miniature painting hobby now lots of people have lots of opinions about paints but here's what I'm gonna say Citadel is usually the most popular because it's how most of us start it's available in lots of different stores Vallejo similar and nothing wrong with those paints you can start there over time you can get into stuff like scale color or Proacryl or Reaper all again three paints I quite like I have a whole video exploring miniature paints their strengths and weaknesses but the important part to understand about them is that whether they're brands you know like that or maybe AK Interactive's new one or Nocturna if you've ever heard of that or secret weapon I'm gonna show in a minute or war colors there are dozens and dozens of brands of miniature paints any of them are fine especially when you're starting out they have different properties some are more opaque some are better for base coats some are better for blending or glazing or things like that doesn't matter you can learn it all over time my best recommendation is when you're starting out get yourself a good set of something like Vallejo it's a great starter paint it performs well it has a good opacity and it generally just works you can find it in most game stores and they have a huge range of colors but don't be afraid to experiment as time goes on lots of these paints can be fun to play with and you can as your style evolves you can find the one that works for you but we can't just talk about paint we've also got to talk about things like washes or shades and our old friend contrast as I already mentioned contrast paints are great they're effectively an ink but they can be used to paint miniatures fast and are great when you're starting out if you use a zenithal base coat like I did you can oftentimes simply apply the contrast and stop washes or shades from from games workshop are also very useful for doing anything like basing or establishing depth in your miniature it's often called liquid talent and I don't use it all the time anymore we'll talk about that in a little while in part 2 in painting but it's still quite useful one last type of paint to talk about metal paints when it comes to metals there's only one type of paint I trust unlike the matte paints where I say use any brand it doesn't matter just have fun with it with metals Vallejo metal color is really a cut above the rest it's unlike any other metal paint acrylic metal paint on the market it's so good it's so smooth it uses aluminum powder instead of mica to produce an extremely realistic metal shine it has a high opacity it goes on like a dream and it just can blend with other colors if you can't find it because sometimes it is hard to find something like the scale 75 metal set here I've got speed metal from that set is a great alternative also a very strong metal set to start out with this one's going to be quick mediums thinners glaze medium Lamia medium whatever when you start out a bunch of people tell you oh you need to get all these mediums and thinners and things like that simple answer you do not you do not need to get any of that stuff all of these types of mediums and thinners are stuff you can explore over time but when you start put them in the bin instead when you start we're going to pick something a little more simple you've got your paint you need to get it thin for your guy what are we going to use well we're going to use our old friend water that's right just good old-fashioned tap water does it have to be distilled no some people will tell you you have to use distilled you don't you can if you have especially hard water in your area but for the most part just get yourself a cup a mug for you know a coffee mug that's from our good friend Sam Lenz or maybe just a little plastic cup fill it up with water you can thin your paint with water and it's good to learn later on down the line you can do mediums we've got our paint we've got our water that means it's time for a palette and the classic choice is dry or wet palette well both have uses it is always good to have a dry palette something like I've got here you can buy little packs of these at the art store they're great for metals which should never go in a wet palette if you need to make a bunch of wash up if you're working a terrain or you want to do something messy like a technical paint that's mostly what I use it for but when I'm actually painting with my normal matte paints I stick completely to a wet palette and that's what I would recommend you do something like this the Masterson stay wet palette they're about 10 to 12 dollars off Amazon or at your local art store comes with everything you need this keeps your paint wet and workable for hours you all you need is what comes here along with some Reynolds non wax baking paper and you're good to go little note when you buy the Masterson's take the paper they give you and throw it in the trash if you don't feel like spending money just go get a ziplock like a Tupperware and put a little sponge in the bottom and some Reynolds on top of that eventually you can also go up to these larger more expensive wet palettes there's lots of people making them now this is mine it is very worn as you can see and they're perfectly fine the key is you want to make sure they stay wet mine has dried out here this wouldn't do its job you need to get a lot of water in there you want to see standing water in the side of the wet palette that means there's enough liquid that through osmosis will come up through the paper and into your paint keeping it we've got our paint it's on the palette we've got our figure it's time to paint but to do that we're gonna need brushes what brushes do we use do you go spend money on things like you know the games workshop brushes no here are the brushes I would recommend based on everything I've ever done one find yourself packs of cheap synthetics so these are the yellow ones that we're gonna start out with you can usually get these in packs of you know some number of Amazon or from your local craft store they'll come in things like size three six you know some varied packet but you want the rounds these are for applying base coats and for doing the majority of your work you can also you'll also be able to do things like washes and stuff like that with these when they wear out who cares throw them in the trash the nice part about these is that they're durable and they get the job done cheap invest in a couple of nice sable brushes if you don't like using animal hair there are replacement synthetics made to work like sable those are also fine these are much softer they hold a much sharper tip you use these for detail work eyes things like that and you use them sparingly but you use them and you'll be amazed how much easier it is to paint with a nice brush like this it's worth the investment of $10 or $20 to pick up a couple of these brushes because they can really transform the way you paint and what you're capable of very early on because of their control but you don't need to use them for every brush stroke and every bit of paint you start with the cheap brush and then you go to the nice one sometimes you're going to need a dry brush it's a great technique whether you're beginning or even painting for years don't go buy flat dry brushes don't go buy expensive dry brushes those are a waste and they perform worse instead use something like I've got here which is a makeup brush I got in a big pack at the dollar store these work so much better and are so much smoother and there's less chalkiness to the brush out to the paint application they're nice soft brushes used for applying makeup to eyes and cheeks and they're perfect for dry brushes finally the last thing you need is a dry brush is a nice set of junk brushes these can just be your old brushes when they lose the tip don't pay any money for these either use your old brushes that have worn out or go buy mega packs for a couple dollars whenever you need to be doing something like I'm doing here where you're smashing the brush that's where you use your junk brushes terrain bases rough texture junk brushes that way we don't ruin anything somewhat nice the thing I would tell you not to do is to spend a middling amount of money on a brush either get your cheap multi-packs and and have fun with your base coats or spend money on something expensive the middling brushes tend to have all the problems of the cheap brushes and none of the advantages of the expensive ones with a selection like this which is pretty easy to get your hold on pretty easy to get a hold of cheap you'll be all set and ready to go so there you go that's hopefully everything you need to get beginning in painting in less than 30 minutes I tried to pack in as much as I could and I hope it was helpful now we didn't paint the figure but come back next week and I'm gonna walk you through the basics of painting the glossary of terms you're gonna hear thrown around that are so confusing when you're starting out we're gonna go ahead and demystify all that and show you that actually it's pretty simple but if you made it to the end of this video thank you so much give it a like subscribe if you haven't already and as always we'll see you next time